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While progress has been made in recent decades, more than 10,000 drunk driving deaths still occur each year in the United States. Since 1982, drunk driving has caused one-third of all traffic deaths on average, the report authors said.

Moreover, people other than the drinking driver account for nearly 40 percent of victims in drunk driving crash deaths, the authors noted.

“The plateauing fatality rates indicate that what has been done to decrease deaths from alcohol-impaired driving has been working but is no longer sufficient to reverse this growing public health problem,” report committee chair Steven Teutsch said in a news release from the National Academies.